Skip to content Artificial intelligence is changing how people work, but its most meaningful effect will be on how they feel at work.
The biggest shift will not be about productivity or speed. It will be how AI reshapes the moments that define the people experience: how employees find information, receive feedback, and grow through their relationships with managers.
The 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Annual Index found a “capacity gap: 53% of leaders say productivity must increase, but 80% of the global workforce—both employees and leaders—say they’re lacking enough time or energy to do their work.” That disconnect highlights AI’s real opportunity: not to replace human connection but to restore the time and focus needed to strengthen it.
When applied thoughtfully, AI can reduce administrative noise, personalize learning, and surface insights managers might otherwise miss. When applied carelessly, it risks weakening the employee–manager relationship by creating more distance, bias, and distrust.
Everyday Moves
Co-design the use of AI with your people by asking where it could make their work easier or more meaningful.
Together choose one repetitive task that adds little value for your team and pilot an AI tool to handle it, freeing time for real conversations.
Use AI to summarize routine updates or feedback so you can spend meetings discussing growth, recognition, and connection instead of status.
AI can’t replace care, curiosity, or trust. Those are human capabilities. What matters now is how organizations use technology to amplify, not replace, those capabilities. The future of the people experience will belong to those who design work where intelligence, human and artificial, work side by side to make the everyday experience of work more human, not less.
If AI helped people get time back, how might that change the experience of work itself?
